


Perfect As It Seems

by AgapantoBlu



Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Dissociative Identity Disorder, F/M, Incorrect depiction of DID, M/M, Mental Illness, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-05
Updated: 2016-10-05
Packaged: 2018-08-19 17:05:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,338
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8218328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AgapantoBlu/pseuds/AgapantoBlu
Summary: It was subtle, how it happened. If he were to pinpoint a moment to mark the start to everything that happened in the next ten years, Masaomi wouldn’t be able to tell.
      But maybe it was when Seijuro was turning one month old and Masaomi woke up at night when he heard the sheets of the bed being moved. 
***In which Shiori may not be the perfect mother we all think she was. And Masaomi keeps secrets.





	

 

**_Perfect As It Seems_ **

 

It was perfect, absolutely perfect.

The light of early morning shining through the half closed curtains, a pure white shade brightening the red of Shiori’s hair; her smile, so pure even in tiredness; the softness of her arms cradling the new bundle to her chest.

Masaomi took a moment to savor the scene, to take in every detail of the moment that crowned the peak of his troubles, the result of a lifetime. His house, his wife and his _son_ : the scene in front of him couldn’t be better.

Finally, he reached the bedside and bent over slightly, just enough to take a proper look to his kid, but keeping his hands crossed behind his back and a respectful distance in between himself and the bed his wife had just given birth on. He was entering a realm that was just for a woman and her child to use and he was aware that, back at his birth, his own father had waited in a whole different room for the nanny to bring him his child. He hadn’t been able to wait that much and as soon as he had been told that the mistress of the house had finally the heir in her arms, he had entered the room.

From the way Shiori’s eyes were shining, she didn’t mind that little freedom he had taken for himself. She always told him he was too caught up in the past traditions, anyway.

But she also looked tired, pale and sweaty as she was, so he took in as much as he could of the newborn – he had been screaming until a moment earlier, but now he looked peaceful, sleeping in his mother’s arms, with pale skin and a blotch of reddish hair on top of his head – before straightening up again.

His hands tingled a bit as something in the deepest core of his brain demanded that he took the kid in his own arms, so much stronger than his wife’s, and protect him as she slept her fatigue away too. He ignored it.

“You did well, Shiori,” he said. His voice came out gruff and stern, probably too cold for the occasion if the glare the obstetrician sent him was anything to go by, but the lady smiled and nodded gracefully.

“I’m glad,” she only answered. Her eyes were glinting in a way that always reminded Masaomi how glad he was he had married her, the one that assured him she knew him better than everybody else.

He greeted her with another polite gesture of the head, before turning and leaving to allow mother and son to have a moment for themselves, to come back from the effort they had put in for that little miracle to happen. When he closed the door behind himself, his hands were shaking lightly.

_Perfect,_ he thought. _Everything is perfect._

 

 

Perfection, nobody taught him, didn’t exist.

 

 

It was subtle, how it happened. If he were to pinpoint a moment to mark the start to everything that happened in the next ten years, Masaomi wouldn’t be able to tell.

But maybe it was when Seijuro was turning one month old and Masaomi woke up at night when he heard the sheets of the bed being moved. He had opened his eyes, surprised when he had seen his wife sitting on the edge and slipping on her night vest.

“Shiori?” he had asked, frowning, “Where are you going?”

“The child is crying,” she had answered, but they were in their room and their son’s was all the way down the corridor.

Masaomi blinked his sleep away, sitting up as he observed his wife standing and moving to the door, somehow weirdly, stiffly, her head slightly bent to a side as if she were listening to something he couldn’t. He frowned again and outstretched an arm to catch her wrist almost without realizing.

He had never been one for casual touches and maybe that was why she turned so suddenly, her surprise widening her eyes so much the moonlight brightened them up so that one of them, for a second, seemed to flash in a different colour from the scarlet of its twin.

It was gone so fast he easily dismissed it as a mistake from tiredness, so he shook his head and frowned.

“The nanny is with him,” he reminded, and Shiori blinked at him as if she was hearing about that for the first time. “If he were crying for food, she’d be calling you.”

She blinked, unfocused, for a moment more, then suddenly she fell sat on the bed again, with a soft “Oh”.

She undressed of her robe, slipped back under the sheets and laid her head on the pillow as if nothing had just happened and Masaomi stood awake for some minutes, confused, to stare at her. When he finally went back to sleep, he had already dismissed the whole matter.

 

 

The second time, he felt the ground vanish from under his feet and his stomach skyrocketing on his throat.

He was walking down a corridor of the mansion, maybe going from his study to his room or the opposite, he couldn’t remember. He had passed by the open door of one of the many guest rooms, the one in the left wing that had view of the stables from afar, and he had turned his head to peek inside without even stopping, out of habit and with a bored expression, when he saw them.

He stopped dead in his track, blood freezing in his veins.

Shiori was pointing at the horizon, chuckling and cooing at the ten months old kid in her arms, whispering about horses and ponies as the baby hiccupped, clearly coming down a fit of crying. Little Seijuro was sitting in his mother’s arms, a loose fist holding onto the fabric of her shirt and his locks ruffled by the wind, uncaring or possibly unaware of the gap between his frail little body and the cold hard ground. He tried to mimic his mother, pointing clumsily in her same direction.

Masaomi wanted to yell at them, but he didn’t dare risking to startle them as his wife kept on dangling their kid _outside_ the window, more and more as she got caught up in pointing newer things to him, _reckless_.

“Shiori,” he called more softly instead, even if unable to keep the terror from his voice, and, _thank gods_ , the woman turned back without loosening her grip on the kid. She pulled him closer to her chest, instead, in the safety of the room and smiled at him.

“Oh, dear,” she spoke softly, as if unaware of what had just happened, “are you done with work for today?”

Masaomi felt anger disappear in confusion. Could she really not realize the dangers of what she had just done?, they were on the third floor, for gods’ sake!

“Not yet,” he answered, almost mechanically, and instead he crossed eyes with his son.

Seijuro was looking at him kind of shyly, a fist in his mouth and the other hand wrapped around one of his mother’s strands, the same shade of his now. When he was caught staring, he hid his face in her neck, but still tried to spy on his father from his den.

Masaomi blinked, because he knew he had never been around much in the past months, while his wife had spent every moment of her day with the little kid. The attachment he showed made the man doubt his own fears for a moment. Surely, Shiori knew even better than him how to tend to their son, right?

Still, there was something stirring in his lungs, suspiciously close to the throat, and he frowned as he turned to leave them.

“Keep the windows closed when you’re carrying Seijuro,” he said anyway, before leaving.

He wondered if he had really seen yellow in his wife’s left iris and he forgot where he had been even headed to at first.

 

 

All the people working at the Akashi Mansion had been thoroughly examined at the moment of their hiring, and the majority had been working there since Masaomi’s father was there. One of the butlers in particular, Sakamoto, had been with them since when Masaomi was fifteen.

In spite of the old age and white hair, Sakamoto was still the most valuable employee in the mansion and had in the years earned his master’s complete trust. Respect, _that_ he had earned by handling all of the late Akashi’s whims. But it was when Seijuro was two and a half that the man earned Masaomi’s eternal gratefulness.

Masaomi was in his study when a maid came to him. She looked confused, a bit out of her breath, and hesitant as she told him Sakamoto asked him to come down in the kitchens immediately. It was such an odd and quite demanding request from a subordinate that Masaomi frowned and complied for nothing but the chance to remind at the man who exactly signed his pay-checks.

The thought vanished from his mind as soon as he heard Shiori’s cheerful laughter through the closed door.

Lately, she had been acting weird. The previous accidents were still in Masaomi’s mind, together with some minor things that had happened in between them as of lately, and his heartbeat sped up immediately. The annoyance at the sudden call turned into an whole different feeling that had him pushing the doors open without realizing the strength he had put in the gesture.

Shiori was mixing something in a little pot on the fires, maybe she was warming some milk, but Sakamoto’s hands were outstretched toward the gangling legs of Seijuro, sitting on the counter right beside the flames, playing idly with a sharp knife.

“Milady…”

“It’s fine, Sakamoto-san,” she chirped, ignoring how close the kid’s arm was to the scalding pot. “Let him play, he was crying so hard before…”

She moved to pick something from her right – cinnamon, Masaomi knew, because she always added a bit to her son’s milk – and she pushed the pot slightly to the other side. The kid eyed the milk coming closer to him and moved a hand to touch it.

“SEIJURO!”

Seijuro jerked at the yell and turned with a terrified expression. His grip on the knife went slack and the thing fell from his hands to clang on the floor; for a moment, Akashi thought it had cut him, but the kid wouldn’t move his eyes from his father’s figure. He looked scared and guilty and his eyes immediately filled with tears.

“Oh, honey, no!” Shiori was all over her child in a moment, and Sakamoto took the opportunity to slip past her and get both the knife from the floor and the pot from the fires. With the things in his arms, he turned to stare at his master.

His expression was almost as terrified as Seijuro’s.

Masaomi looked back at his wife, cuddling their child and begging him not to cry, and his son, looking ready to bawl his eyes out but stubbornly holding his tears in and spying on his father from above his mother’s shoulder. He seemed to be waiting for a scolding, probably thinking that the yell from before had been due to some mistake on his part, but his father couldn’t bring himself to come closer to them.

Shiori couldn’t possibly haven’t realized how dangerous it was to sit their child beside the flames, to give him a _knife_ to play with, right?! How could she do that?! And even now, she seemed completely unaware of her husband’s presence, unfazed from his previous outburst, as her whole focus was the child in her arms.

“Don’t cry, Seijuro, don’t cry,” she kept on saying, “Mom is here, all right? Your mom is just here.”

Masaomi’s grip on the handle of the door turned his fist white. “Shiori,-” he said, “-bring Seijuro to his room. He’s not supposed to be here.”

For the first time, she actually turned to look at him. She was blinking, confused, but there was no mistake in the golden shade of her left iris.

“But we were-…” she tried to say, but Masaomi didn’t let her finish.

“ _Now._ ” He could feel control slipping out of his grip, his face morphing to show his own terror. He couldn’t let that happen, he couldn’t let his son see his father’s distress, so he turned his back on the both of them. “I expect to never see him down here again.”

He left before she could rope him into an argument, but he still heard his son’s little sob against her neck.

 

 

Accidents happened, Masaomi would repeat that to himself every time he noticed a plaster on his son, but the seed of fear had planted in his brain already and he couldn’t stop it from growing, every day more.

Seijuro would sit at the table at his mother’s side, looking up to her like she was his biggest treasure, and she would kiss his forehead and brush their noses together, while he, at the other end of the table, wasn’t able to move his eyes from his wife’s knife. It was stressing, vexing, to be on the lookout for something he couldn’t even recognize. Shiori would smile at him or ask him to join the two of them in some activity and her eyes would shine red, _the both of them_ , but he couldn’t do anything but refuse, too scared to get caught up and miss something. Miss the moment his wife would endanger their son again.

Soon enough the situation had him on the most extreme edge he’d ever experienced. He was cautious, suspicious of everything and everyone, and he had become ruthless in both his business and his personal relationships. His associates grew to fear him; his friends vanished slowly. The last of them, Midorima Ayato, a doctor, tried to get him to see a psychiatrist and he had almost yelled at him that he wasn’t the one in need of mental help.

He almost never talked to Shiori anymore. He looked at her and half his brain yelled at him she was an enemy, someone to be guarded of, as the other screamed that she didn’t even realize, how could that be?!

Seijuro loved his mother to lengths Masaomi couldn’t even begin to phantom. He looked at her like she was the world, completely unaware, like a butterfly playing with a poisonous flower.

Accidents happened, but the fourth time a grave one happened, he couldn’t hold it in anymore.

Sakamoto had personally come to tell him that one of the stablemen had called the mansion to ask if it was really all right of him to let the mistress and the young master near the new horse. The black one, a big Percheron from France, only partially trained.

Masaomi had been up and headed to the stables before Sakamoto could finish reminding him which beast they were even talking about.

Percheron horses were big animals, their height reaching from sixty to sixty four inches at the withers. Shiori herself couldn’t reach them, so when he got there and the sight that welcomed him was his wife on her tiptoes, waving at their four years old son sitting on the animal that was now snorting and hitting a leg against the floor nervously, he felt like dying.

“Take him down, now!,” he ordered, striving to keep his voice calm not to further upset the animal, but his tone still came out cold and sudden enough for Seijuro to jerk. Without reins to hold on to, nor a saddle, the child slipped easily on the big horse’s lucid fur.

Masaomi saw him disappearing on the other side of the animal and he ran forward, but one of the stablemen was faster and caught the kid before he hit the ground. Seijuro had his eyes widened, frozen open, and his breath was just slightly fastened, but he didn’t seem to be too shaken, as his father felt instead.

“Honey!” Shiori move to circle around the horse and reach for her son and Masaomi caught her arm just in time to prevent her from going behind the animal, who was nervously moving his head from side to side now. His posterior legs seemed ready to kick whoever came in reach.

Two other stablemen must have noticed too, because they came to bring the horse back in his place, and as soon as the animal wall had moved, the third man approached them to give Seijuro back to his mother.

Masaomi pulled her closer and stopped him with a gesture of the hand. “Bring him back home,” he ordered. Seijuro was looking at him with the pain of betrayal written on his face and he strived not to look at him. The man too looked surprised. “You will be paid for the bother.”

“But…!” Shiori seemed ready to object, but a look at her husband’s face let her know she had no other choice but to wait with him. Her eyes glinted with a flash of gold.

When Seijuro murmured a soft “Mother…?”, she gave him the brightest of her smiles. “It’s all right, sweetheart,” she promised, “Mommy and Dad need to talk about something real quick, you see. Go on and I’ll see you at home as soon as we are done.”

He didn’t look convinced, but could do nothing but stare at her as he was brought away. He never once glanced at his father.

When he finally was too far to hear, Masaomi turned to his wife. “What was that?!”

The horses nearby shifted, nervous at the tension in his voice, but he ignored them as Shiori looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,-” she crossed her arms, defiantly, “-but I sure know you scared the kid, Masaomi. What were you thinking?”

“What _I_ was thinking?! Really, Shiori?! What I was thinking?! You put our son on that horse! He could have fallen!”

“He wouldn’t have if you hadn’t yelled at him,” she retorted, shaking her head. “Listen, Seijuro fell from his pony and was crying. I just thought this would have…”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Shiori!” Masaomi interrupted her, his voice no longer restrained. He had to take a step from her, to turn once before facing her again, because he felt himself losing control. “You can’t reach that beast for yourself, he could have broken something! What if the horse was spooked?! He could have crushed Seijuro, dammit!”

“That’s not true, he’s…”

“HE IS _FOUR, SHIORI_!” Two of the stablemen jerked at the scream, and they hurriedly left the place, but she…

She just cocked her head to a side, frowning gently as she thought. Masaomi felt his mouth gape at the way she seemed to space out for a second, the way her lips thinned in a line and her eyes closed. He whole posture shifted a bit, her shoulders hunched slightly, and she brought her hand to touch her left temple. She massaged it for a moment, a soft moan of pain leaving her lips, but when she opened her eyes again, she seemed more like the woman Masaomi had married.

Her irises, when she looked up at him, were both red.

It was like everything was frozen in ice, for just a moment that felt like a lifetime, but then her expression shifted. The careless indifference made room for a terrified realization and she brought a hand to her mouth. When she started trembling, Masaomi hesitantly touched her shoulder. “Shiori…”

“How could… I… He could have…” Her eyes were unfocused, her words a senseless string of terrified sceneries, and he didn’t dare to hold her. She looked frail enough to crumble under the weight of his arms. “Why did I…?!”

For once, Masaomi didn’t know.

They waited outside long enough for Seijuro to be asleep on his mother’s studio’s sofa when they finally came back.

 

 

The day after the accident with the horse, Shiori brought Seijuro to play in the garden behind the house, right under Masaomi’s windows, and the man had a lot of papers to take care of, but instead stared at them for hours before finally pressing the button on his desk to call his butler.

His eyes never left the last pair in the gardens, even when someone knocked and entered.

Sakamoto waited silently, allowing him time to think, but Masaomi didn’t need it. All the time in the world wouldn’t have allowed him to comprehend why his wife would be so careless with their child’s safety, so oblivious and reckless when she’d never been either before. He looked at her braiding a flower crown as Seijuro pointed to all kinds of plants, excitedly asking for something.

“Keep an eye on my son,” he said instead, cold and emotionless, crossing his arms behind his back, “Consider yourself relieved of all the other duties. If needed, hire someone to take over them instead. You shall never leave Seijuro alone, whatever the reason.”

He heard a low approving hum from behind him, but not the usual “Yes sir” he was expecting, and indeed Sakamoto cleared his throat.

“If I may ask, Sir,” Masaomi didn’t turn, but he could feel the man’s eyes on his skull, “What about when the young master is with the mistress?”

There was a knot in his throat, closing fast, _strangling him_.

“Never leave her alone with him.”

 

 

Sakamoto was a good man, one that in his old age was still more than able to perform whatever task he was entrusted with, if only out of sheer willpower and loyalty to the family he had been serving for so long. With the experience from handling his own children, now all grown up, he easily managed to catch his young master’s attention and soon enough the kid had warmed up to him too.

Masaomi had thought everything was alright that way, until the moment Shiori walked into his studio and locked the door behind her.

He looked up to her and her cheeks were damp and reddened, her eyes bright with tears as she searched for his.

“I can’t…” she stared, but only to shake her head. She bit her lip to kill a sob and he got up from his seat but didn’t dare to approach her. She leaned against the door at her back and looked at him with tears streaming down her face again. “I need help.”

Masaomi jerked. “Seijuro?!” but she shook her head.

“He’s with Sakamoto, they’re…drawing or something.” She gulped, passing a hand on her face. “He fell and was crying and I wanted to… I don’t know. I don’t know what I wanted to do, but Sakamoto stopped me and I had scissors in my hand. He said I wanted to cut his bangs so he could see better when he was running.” Her arm fell to her side again, freeing the pitiful expression on her face. Lost, sad, helpless, she looked at him and repeated: “I need help. I need help before I hurt him.”

“I will call Midorima-san.” He blinked the fog on his eyes away, but sat down again, feeling his legs unable to sustain him. “He will find someone for us.” _For you._

She nodded, and he watched her crying silently against the door.

 

 

The psychiatrist Midorima found them met them at their house, keeping the secrecy in exchange of a good sum, but after the first couple of encounters, when he finally talked to both the Akashi in one of the spare studios of the house, he looked honestly saddened by the news he was delivering.

“I think this may be a case of an heavy form of Dissociative Identity Disorder, or something extremely similar,” he had said, never breaking eye contact, never letting his voice shake, “I can’t really make a final diagnosis without seeing, well, the other personality, but this seems to be the most plausible option. Milady has been talking about a voice, her own, telling her to do things, to act some way, always and only around your child.”

Masaomi had tried to look at Shiori, but he was frozen looking at the doctor. She was barely a frozen statue sitting at his side, pale and cold in the afternoon light. The man himself had looked at him the whole time, maybe because her eyes were unfocused, looking outside the window as if it wasn’t all about her.

“It might have a trigger,” the doctor had continued, frowning as if not sure about sharing such feeble theories, “These kind of things don’t really come with an instruction manual. Every individual is different, and so are their coping mechanisms. There are theories about a genetic composition of mental illnesses, statistics proving that the chances of developing one if parents or relatives had been affected too are higher than for people without a record; and milady’s family shows quite some cases, from depression to schizophrenia, that may have exposed her to a higher risk. The first case of DID was found in a young woman of the high class, too. I would need more exams, but my hypothesis is that the birth of your son started the mechanism and, according to all your versions, the trigger for the second personality to emerge is probably the kid’s crying.”

A week later, she had undergone a first hypnosis therapy session and the doctor had come out of the room to meet Masaomi, alone, shaking his head slightly.

“Her other self came out only briefly at the mention of Seijuro,” he explained, serious, “Alter-egos are usually the result of an amplified trait of the original person and this one seems to be driven by an exaggerated motherly instinct. She would do anything to get her kid to stop crying and has no sense of danger whatsoever. Nothing matters but the child’s happiness, anything else it’s just-” he shrugged, looking for words, “- _collateral_ ; a detail in the background that holds no importance whatsoever. Our brains work on a system of saliency, but this other half prioritizes only the kid’s crying and is unable to consider anything else as more important.”

“This other self, will it-” Masaomi coughed, gulping to cover up the slip, and ignored the pitying look he was receiving to put on once more his cold façade of coldness, “- _she_ ”, he straightened up, “-be able to learn how to care for Seijuro properly?”

“As I told you already, this kind of mental illness cannot be cured; we can only try to control it and to find a way for her to live her life at the best possible conditions.” He seemed to hesitate as he met Masaomi’s eyes head on, but his voice was firm. “I have still to tell milady, but in this conditions… professionally and personally, I don’t deem safe to let her interact with the child. The chances of her other self to awake and do something dangerous are terribly high. Obviously, this is a choice for you two to make, but I have to inform you that I don’t think her other self will ever develop the ability to realize she’s just one step from killing her son.”

 

 

Shiori blinked, looking up to him as if she couldn’t understand, but she only met firm eyes and in the end she nodded silently and lowered her head.

“How much?” she asked, her voice low, almost shy.

“Some hours per day, we’ll see how much we’ll manage,” Masaomi didn’t look at her. It was his turn to look outside the window, now, so he walked closer to the glass, offering his withering wife only his shoulders, “I won’t intrude in your time with him, but the two of you will never be alone together. I’ll hire someone to help Sakamoto looking out for Seijuro twenty-four hours per day. We’ll tell him this new asset is due to his new schedule of lessons.” His voice was empty, just like his mind as he repeated words he had gone over thousands of times already. “He won’t have to know about your… _condition_.”

_He won’t have to know you almost killed him; he won’t have to know you’re too dangerous to be with him._

He didn’t say those words aloud, but Shiori heard them anyway, because she knew him just that well, and she smiled in his direction, mouthing a silent ‘Thank you’ before she got up and left the studio to go back to her room.

Masaomi knew that because he had cheated and spied on her reflection in the glass.

When the door closed, he let his shoulders slump and his head dangle forward.

Perfection seemed such a far blurry dream, now.

 

 

Seijuro suffered for the detachment from his mother. Even Masaomi, who spent with him only a little amount of time, preferring to let his wife have all the lessons-free moments she could with their kid, could notice that, but he was an Akashi and as such he held on.

He was smart, far smarter than what anyone in the Akashi family had ever been, and he worked hard with the clear goal of being allowed even just a handful of minutes more with his adored mother. Soon enough, the lessons that had already been scheduled for him weren’t enough, overcome or dismissed as simplistic or ‘studied on his own’, mastered out of the realm of normalcy, and Masaomi had to add more to keep their child from being with his mother.

The trigger for Shiori’s other self was probably Sejuro’s crying and preventing that was becoming the only goal Masaomi could focus on. Together with normal lessons came practices of many arts; calligraphy for patience and horse riding for control, homework and homework to build his stress resistance and a sport, had been decided, for physical endurance.

Shiori had chosen that. Basketball, just what she used to play herself in high school.

Masaomi had looked at her passing her old ball down to her son and had remembered. Her laughter when he had first seen her playing, the freedom in her body moving swiftly on the court, the beads of sweat sticking hair to her skin and her flushed face as her teammates hugged her after a point. She used to be so different back then, before her family demanded for her to become a perfect lady for the high society, a perfect spouse for the Akashi family, and all that energy in her had been locked away and crushed.

He may have started to see, that day, when her wife’s sanity had started deteriorating. In retrospective, not even he was able to conciliate the old picture of the cheerful powerful teen she used to be, with the portrait of the composed elegant lady she was now. A veil of melancholy seemed to stay in between the two images and Masaomi thought for a moment that, if her other self had a different face, he knew what it would look like.

Masaomi resented the ball he saw his son bounce in their garden.

 

 

That was a lie. He resented himself, and no one else.

 

 

The guilt stopped him from meeting his son almost completely. With the exception of meals, Masaomi never dared meeting his kid’s expectant eyes. And how could he?, when he was the main reason of his mother’s insanity, of the child’s workload, of their family’s misery? By the time his son had turned nine, he would only meet him to bring notice about new lessons that came to add to his day, cutting Shiori off a bit more once again.

Seijuro’s eyes never showed resentment, or hatred. It was something Masaomi couldn’t wrap his head around.

However he may act, the child would always look up to him with a hint of hope behind the general politeness and etiquette, like he was waiting for something that Masaomi had no idea of. When the bad news came, he would look dejected, sad, but never angry. It wasn’t anywhere close to the genuine joy when he was with Shiori, but Seijuro still seemed to hold some kind of misplaced affection for the father that had ruined his life so much without his knowledge.

Those kid’s eyes always shone red for him.

 

 

When Seijuro was ten, his workload had reached a level that put at risk his own health. The psychologist that was still taking care of Shiori never missed reminding Masaomi how the kid was exposed to the same probability of a mental illness of his mother, therefore a new excuse was needed.

“Your mother is ill, young master,” Sakamoto sat on his heels to face the kid eye to eye and Masaomi wondered at how easily he could lie to such a young and earnest boy. He himself hadn’t had the heart to. “Maybe it’s better if we let her rest, now, isn’t it? You can come back and play with her more tomorrow.”

Seijuro was clearly unhappy, his little shoulders going stiff under the white shirt he was wearing, but he nodded and with his thin legs, like pale noodles out of his black shorts, he ran to the side of his mother’s bed to climb it and lay a gentle kiss on her cheek.

“I hope you’ll recover soon, Mother,” he greeted, always perfect, and Masaomi could only see his back, but wasn’t spared the smile the lit up Shiori’s face completely.

“I’ll be better soon, honey,” she assured, lying just as much as her butler, and the older Akashi couldn’t take it, but turned and left before his son could notice him. He still managed to hear her, as he walked away: “You’ll see, we’ll be playing basketball together again in a few days at most.”

They were all just a bunch of liars, but he still found himself hoping Seijuro’s perfection would never pick up on that betrayal.

 

 

They went on with the lie of an illness for _months_.

Seijuro was a kid, but he was smart enough to realize something wasn’t right. A cold didn’t last that much, after all, nor a flu or the scarlet fever. Not even measles! It was something different, probably worse.

Seijuro had never really searched for his father before, probably out of a childish fear of bothering him and adding more to the distance already between them, and that was why he felt almost as surprised as his dad seemed when he entered his study one evening before dinner.

“Is Mother going to die?” he had asked, ten and with eyes open and honest, vulnerable.

For a moment, Masaomi was reminded of the time he had seen the kid on the big Percheron, striving to keep balanced on something so much bigger than him, and he got up. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, maybe for once he wanted to try to close the gap between them, but then he saw her.

Shiori was standing just outside the secondary door that connected the studio with the main bedroom and her face was distorted in desperation. Her eyes were too bright and far for Masaomi to say, but for he moment he thought he had seen gold in one of them and old fears came back to hit him.

“Go back to your room, Seijuro,” he ordered, his son’s question already forgotten and his voice probably far too harsh, because the child jerked at the sudden demand.

Shiori jerked too, but the kid only nodded, bowed politely and left without adding a single word to the conversation.

Masaomi strived to ignore his wife’s pleading look as he sat back at his desk. He could _not_ give in to her wish, not when Seijuro’s life was at stake.

 

 

Shiori and he hadn’t shared the bed in years, after all that had been happening. For as much as she denied, Masaomi knew she must feel some kind of resentment for him and how he had been limiting her time with their son.

One night of May, Masaomi regretted letting her leave deeply.

Sakamoto was the one who came to wake him up, shaking his shoulders with an intimacy he had never taken in years, and Akashi had frowned at first before remembering the butler was supposed to spend the night in the secondary bedroom of Seijuro’s apartments. Then, he was up and running down the corridor.

“I don’t know how she got in!” the man was saying. “She didn’t come into my room and the door of the adjacent studio should be locked!”

Except it wasn’t, Masaomi could see it as he approached Seijuro’s door, and he cursed mentally, but wasted no time entering the child’s room.

At first he froze noticing the empty unmade bed, but then he heard the sound of running water even before Sakamoto pointed the personal bathroom at him. The light filtering under the door was warm, in contrast with the darkness of the room, but it did little to ease him. He gestured the butler to follow as he stepped in, the hand on the handle trembling slightly as he pulled, but he couldn’t say he was prepared, in any way, when he saw Shiori.

She was sitting on the edge of the bath-tube, still in her nightgown, and cradling Seijuro’s body to her chest. He seemed still asleep, his head resting peacefully against her neck, despite the light and the sound of water. She passed a hand through his locks and then a thumb on his cheek, just under the eye, and Masaomi realized his cheeks were flushed and his eyes wrinkled, as if he had fallen asleep crying.

He couldn’t bring himself to care when he took a breath in and the steam from the bathtub almost made him choke.

“Shiori,” he called, but she didn’t look up. “Shiori.” She smiled down at the kid, moving red strands from his forehead calmly. “SHIORI.”

He bit his tongue as soon as the loud name had escaped his lips, but while his wife finally lifted her head, his son didn’t as much as stir. Masaomi’s skin crawled in fear.

“Oh, dear,” she said, calm and gentle, rocking her kid a bit more. “You’re up early.”

“Shiori, what are you doing?” he strived to keep his voice in check, to keep calm, as he took a step closer and the hotness of the bathroom hit him fully.

The woman tilted her head to a side, confused, but she smiled at him, with the condescension she could have shown a kid who asked why the sky was blue. He wanted to ask why her eyes was golden, instead, but he knew, he knew, _he knew_.

“I’m helping Seijuro take a bath,” she answered simply, her eyes moving back on her child’s serene expression. “He’s been so tense the past months, darling. I fear our plan has been hurting him too much. He needs to relax a bit.”

_Not like that!_ , he wanted to scream, but instead he gulped and took a deep breath.

“Shiori, he can’t bathe there,” he tried to reason. He wanted nothing more than to run in and pull the kid from her arms, but Seijuro’s head could have hit anything or he could have been dropped in the water, and there was also no way to know how his mother would have reacted. It was too dangerous, so he outstretched his hands slowly, careful. “Shiori, the water is too hot for him, he’s just a child.”

His words fell on deaf hears, Shiori all too busy caressing her son’s face, her pale hand so soft and terrifying as it was crafted through crimson locks, the love in her gestures twisted into something dark and hurtful, naïve to the point of cruelty. Masaomi could feel his heart beating fast in his head, and he knew he had never been more scared before.

Striving to keep his expression in check, he took a step inside. The woman didn’t react, but neither she looked at the water level growing just beside her, far past the normal height, fast with the three faucets all pouring. The steam was enough to make it hard to breath.

“Shiori,” he called, because he couldn’t do anything else, because his mind wouldn’t supply him with any way to fight his way through _this_ , because she was all he could think of but his son was all he could look at. “Shiori, give him to, please.”

That seemed to wake her up, because her head snapped to a side to stare at him with widened eyes.

“What? No!,” she shook her head, almost frantically. Her voice raised word by word, shocked. “No, I’m going to help him bath. I don’t want to give him to you, we’re together now!”

“Wait, Shiori, listen-” Masaomi tried again, but when he took another step, his wife bent backward a bit, leaning over the bathtub and moving her son protectively behind her. Seijuro’s left leg dangled dangerously just a few inches above the water, his little feet pink and naked out of his teal pyjamas’ pants. “SHIORI, YOU’RE GOING TO BURN HIM!”

He sucked his breath in. Shiori had jerked at his sudden outburst, and for a moment all he could think of was how grateful he felt that her grip didn’t loosen. But then he looked at Seijuro again and he felt something in him dropping all the way to the bottom of his stomach, he felt a metallic cage biting down on his lugs to squeeze the air out and make him choke on his own breath.

“Shiori.” His voice trembled. For the first time, his voice trembled, and so did his hands and shoulder and _everything_. He trembled, because his son’s eyes were closed and his lips relaxed against his mother’s skin. “Shiori,-” he gulped, _please_ , “-why isn’t he waking up?”

Shiori pulled the kid closer, a bit further from the bathtub as she tried to sat him on her lap. Alone, because he wasn’t responding. Obviously he wasn’t, because he was asleep. He had been asleep the whole time, through his mom picking him up and the sound of running water and the voices speaking just above him. He had been asleep through his father’s yelling.

She didn’t seem to mind as she kissed his forehead.

“Shiori, _why isn’t he waking up_.” It didn’t sound like a question, more like a desperate pleas or some burning beg. Masaomi had never heard his own voice taking that inflection, but he felt it in the depth of his throat as it broke in the middle of the last word. “ _Shiori_!”

She shook her head fast, as if to wave him away, but she kept on rocking the child in her arms, calm once more. “It’s all right, dear, he won’t wake up.” She lifted her head and smiled at him, fondly. “He has been having troubles to sleep so I gave him some of pills,-” she looked down again, “-can’t you see how relaxed he is, now? He needed a break so much, poor thing.”

Masaomi died a bit, in that moment. In all the years he’d live, he would always remember that moment as the second he had known what dying felt like. It felt like utter despair and loneliness, like suddenly finding yourself into an empty land in the middle of a snow storm.

Some of Shiori’s pills. Some of Shiori’s sleeping pills. She gave their son…

“Sir!” _Calm down._ He lifted a hand to stop Sakamoto from ending his horrified sentence, but he never moved his eyes from his wife. _We have still time. She can’t have given them to him long ago._

When he spoke again, his voice was firmer, stern. “Shiori, give Seijuro to me.” She shook her head. “Shiori, the pills will hurt him, the water will, you _have_ to give him to me, _now_.”

“No, you don’t-”

“SHIORI!”

She jerked. Her elbow hit one of the soap bars on the edge and the splashes of hot water hit her side. She cried out, turning suddenly to look at her back, and her grip on Seijuro went slack for a moment.

Masaomi didn’t think. He lunged forward and he grabbed his son’s body roughly, as firmly as he could, and pulled.

The weight of the child against his chest was insignificant, yet so heavy, so meaningful, he almost broke down there.

Sakamoto had moved before he could notice and Shiori was screaming now, completely out of her mind as she reached out with both arms toward Seijuro, but was hold back by the butler. Her eyes were glinting, gold and blood mixing to the screeches, and Masaomi gulped.

“Take care of her,” he only ordered, sure that Sakamoto would obey, before turning his back and fleeing the room.

The screams hunted him all the way to the garage, but when he opened the passenger seat of the fastest of his cars and laid his son in, everything was tuned out. Only his pale face, his low breath, his limp body, his cold skin, mattered for a moment.

He secured his seatbelt as fast as he could and then run to the driver seat.

 

 

When they reached the hospital, he grabbed Seijuro and dragged him above the space in between the seats. Running out and toward the entrance, he abandoned the car with the doors open and the keys in, and if someone wanted to steal it, may they do that. He didn’t want to see those interiors ever again.

His body and possibly half his brain worked in autopilot, telling the nurse what had happened and all the things they needed to know about the kid – blood type, allergies, weight, age, how many did he eat?, he had no idea – as they all ran toward the ICU unit, but then a doctor came and pulled Seijuro from his arms and a nurse stopped him and told him he couldn’t follow.

He watched the door close on his face and he realized that his son’s body had been cold, _too cold_ , but its absence felt even colder.

 

 

He had been staring at the white tiles on the floor of the corridor for hours when he heard hurried steps dying close to him, in a hesitant agony. He saw from the corner of his eyes the battered old red sneakers peeking from under a silky long white nightgown, but he didn’t lift his head.

“M-Masa…” The tremble in her voice was enough to guess which Shiori had come, at last.

“They’re pumping his stomach, still.” He was surprised. His voice wasn’t wavering anymore, despite the fact that he was feeling like a sand-storm had scrubbed away everything he could have ever had inside. “They said the drug hadn’t been absorbed much yet, but they will need to keep him in the whole night at least, just to make sure nothing happens.” He shrugged. “The doctor said he’s strong.”

He didn’t know why he added the last part. Seijuro was just a child, he wasn’t supposed to be strong. Again, his strength had been what had saved him, probably.

Shiori’s breath came out in trembling chocked sob. He couldn’t see her expression, but he guessed her eyes were puffy and her lips torched and wrinkled, as they always got when she was trying not to cry. He knew her just that well, but probably it wasn’t well enough.

He saw her moving to reach for a chair in front of him – not beside, not anymore, they had drifted apart so much in those past years –.

“I can’t.” She stopped dead in her tracks and for a moment she stood, but then the hem of her nightgown swung and she turned once more. Masaomi figured he had to at least look her in the eyes as he clarified. “I can’t do _this_ anymore.”

She looked like a lost little girl. Her face was pale, but her swollen lips red and the bags under her eyes a deep purplish black. Her eyes were puffy, shiny with unshed tears, and her hair were a mess. She looked too young and too old at the same time.

The expression she opened up in was desperate and hopeless. “Y-You want to leav-”

“No.” He didn’t even let her finish. The mere idea made him feel like throwing up. He would never abandon his son.

The thoughts must have been written on his face, because her eyes flickered all over it, focused, and when she was done her mouth gaped for a second, understanding downing on her like a bucket of freezing cold water on her skin. Masaomi hated himself for putting that look on her, but he kept on staring, his own expression tired and empty.

This time, she smiled, but the feelings were just the same. Despair was written in every word she spoke.

“You want _me_ to leave,” she corrected and this time he let her say it. They should have accepted this a long time ago.

He didn’t say anything and she gave up, letting tears fell down her cheek to jump into the void under her chin. She was gorgeous even when she cried, prideful in the way she held herself yet lost in the way her hands wouldn’t stop shaking. She walked backward until she fell on the chair in front of his.

She closed her eyes and he went back to look at the floor. That saved them a bunch of lawyers and years of trials.

A nurse walked down the corridor, stepping in between them without noticing the tension – or maybe too used to the pain of those who were waiting –.

“We will explain to him about-”

“No.”

He blinked, shocked at being interrupted, but when he looked up she was shaking her head and muttering something under her breath as if talking with herself. Or, he thought with a shiver, her _other_ self.

“Can you just…” She hesitated, but when she opened her eyes again to look at him, a handful of seconds later, both were her usual comforting red. “Please, don’t tell him what I did.”

“Shiori…”

She shook her head violently and her hair whipped the air, surrounding her like a dangerous aura that didn’t fit her pain at all. “I won’t ask you anything else,” she whispered, without looking at him. “I will _never_ ask you for anything else, I swear, but please _, please,-_ ” she sobbed, “-don’t let him know what I did to him.”

Shiori was pitiful, from her voice to her appearance to her request, everything. And Masaomi felt a painful tug at his heart in seeing her like that.

“He’ll want to know why you left the house,” he tried to say, but she shook her head.

“No, don’t-…” She ran her hand on her face, pulling at the skin with so much strength she seemed to be trying to peel it away. “He doesn’t need a mother that comes by only a couple hours a week. But I don’t want him to think I abandoned him either. He’s been hurt too much already because of me and I don’t want him to have that scar too. I don’t.”

Masaomi waited for a moment, unsure of what he was being asked, as she folded forward on herself, dug her hands in her hair pulling, hissed something in a hateful whisper that was probably meant only for her own mind to hear. “What should I-”

“He thinks I’m dying,” she interrupted him, suddenly lifting her head to fix him with a tired but resolute look. “That’s why he was crying tonight. He thinks I’m dying and if vanishing from his life for good is the best for him, then…” She sobbed, this time unable to hold herself back as she spoke of leaving. Her hand was fast on her mouth, trying to keep everything in, but her whole body started to shake uncontrollably.

Masaomi thought that they used to be happy, but it was hard to remember in that moment. He stood up, still, and crossed the two steps of the corridor feeling as if he were signing a treaty.

_A ceased fire_ , he thought bitterly as he sat down beside his wife, as he laid a hand on one of hers and she entangled their fingers tightly.

She laid her forehead against his shoulder, hair falling to hide her face like a curtain at the end of the show on the tired frames of its actors. Something fell to dump his sleeve, but he pretended not to notice and just stared straight ahead, at the wall.

It took her a couple of hours to speak again, but when she did, Masaomi wasn’t sure which part of her exhausted mind was talking.

“I just wanted to be a good mom for him,” she had whispered and he stiffened not to crumble right there beside her.

“I know.”

 

 

That Seijuro was strong was something Masaomi swore to never forget. As he laid in his little bed, still asleep, his son looked firm, unshaken from the misery surrounding him, and his breath was calm and even.

His father knew because he had been using it to slow his own down.

Shiori sat on the side of the bed and caressed her child’s forehead or head trying to smoother down the rebellious locks, pointing everywhere, something chuckling tiredly to herself when some attempt failed colossally. When Seijuro started to stir a bit, thought, she retired her hand and stood up.

Masaomi looked surprised, but she shook her head. “I am mortally ill, remember? I can’t possibly be strong enough to come here.”

It hit him right in the stomach, how serious she was, how real that situation of theirs was, but he kept impassive. In the past years, he had discovered he was amazingly skilled, when it came to hide his hurt. He just nodded.

On the door, she touched his arm gently. “When you come home, could you send him to me? I’ll stay in bed, I promise. Sakamoto can stay in the room with us.”

_I need to say goodbye._ It was all over her face, dripping through every note of her voice, completely unfair. He nodded again.

She left without a sound.

 

 

When Seijuro woke up, he looked disoriented and confused, but not scared in the slightest. The principle of worry frowning his forehead died down when he noticed his father sitting in a chair beside his bed.

“You had an high fever,” the man lied smoothly, his voice as stern as always, making it impossible for the kid to pick on his real feelings. “The doctors say you’re healed and we can go home today, after they check on you once more.”

Seijuro blinked on his red, _beautiful red_ , eyes for a moment, before nodding seriously.

“I will make up for the lessons I missed, father,” he promised, earnest with his raspy voice, trying to fill his chest to look bigger and prouder.

Masaomi would have smiled at the sight, had the situation been different, but instead he nodded again. He was missing his words every day more, he realized, to rely in simple gestures as that. Maybe he was just trying to prevent his feelings from leaking through, maybe he felt as if opening his mouth would let the truth out to destroy everything around him as it was doing to everything _inside_ him.

“I am sure you will,” he ended up saying, his blank mind filling the gaps with empty words he had just heard thousands of times from his own father. “You are an Akashi, after all.”

And Seijuro really was. It was Shiori whom had never fared well with that surname, in the end.

 

 

Two weeks. That was the time it took Shiori to pack her things in great secrecy and find a place to stay at, a house for mentally ill patients or something like that, a place she would be taken care for by people who wouldn’t allow her to come back and hurt her son again. Masaomi didn’t know where, she hadn’t let him take part to anything. She had decreased by herself, day after day, the time for her son to spend in her room, ‘till when the day before she left she didn’t allow him in at all.

Masaomi came to see her off, at the crack of dawn, with Sakamoto guarding carefully Seijuro’s room, to make sure he didn’t wake up. He had bought her a car, just so she could vanish with that and Seijuro wouldn’t notice one had gone missing. They didn’t hug nor say anything, she looked at him as if she was trying to see through, at the house at his back.

When he was going to close her car door, she gave him one last shaky smile. “Take care of him, all right?”

Masaomi had gotten used to not listen to his own voice, to let a movement of his head answer for him and she outstretched a arm, almost as if to touch his face, but retreated it almost immediately and he closed the door.

She left without looking back, but he knew her enough to know she was crying again.

 

 

“How is Mother, today?”

“Young master…”

There wasn’t a threat anymore, yet Masaomi stood still, tense and guarded just outside his son’s door, for the whole time he could hear him sobbing inside, with his face pressed in his pillow.

 

 

The funeral was more for Seijuro’s sake than for real pretence. Nobody was invited and in front of the fake altar surrounded by white lilies were just the two Akashi, father and son as they were, alone at last.

Seijuro would look at his mother’s picture with his mouth slightly open in surprise, as if he couldn’t really understand what was happening, and Masaomi let him stare for as long as he wanted, long hours that they spent in silence. The child would caress the petals, stare at his mother’s frozen smile, murmur something with barely a movement of his lips, but finally it seemed to down on him that his mom would never come back for him.

When it happened, he turned to look at his father and Masaomi didn’t know which expression was on his face.

“I will-” he hesitated, his eyes flickering one last time to his mother’s picture, “-go to my room. To study.”

What irony, Masaomi thought as he dismissed his son, that they were both lying so much when Shiori had barely left since a day.

He didn’t point it out, though, and he let his son vanish silently, probably to cry his loss in solitude, and he himself went to shut the room of his study behind him. He took a deep breath, telling himself he could do that, he could take care of Seijuro on his own, but when he pushed away from the door and stepped closer to his desk, he frowned in seeing a card standing on top of his unfinished documents.

He sat on his chair trying to gauge something from the white paper that seemed like an invitation to a wedding or a birthday wishes card, if not for the complete blankness. When he picked it up and opened it, he recognized the calligraphy before his mind could register the words.

And address in neat letters and numbers and a simple message, slightly more imprecise, betraying a hand that had trembled a bit.

 

> _I love you both,_
> 
> _Shiori._  

That was all. As if Masaomi didn’t already knew that much.

He let the card fall in the open bottom drawer at his left and bent to close it. The lock clicked and he tried to forget.

 

 

When the door of his study opened without any previous announcement if not a feeble “Young Master!” from Sakamoto - the son, not the old one -, Masaomi didn’t even lift his head from the papers in front of him. Well, there was just one person the security wouldn’t stop, anyway.

“Did you forget all your manners, Seijuro?” he commented offhandedly, but frowned when all his answer was a hand placed on the lines he was reading.

_A big hand_ , he noticed. _A man’s hand._

He looked up and there, in all the cockiness of his twenty-five years stood his son, blazing red hair in a pleasant disarray and a smirk to accompany his arched brow and the smugness of his open shoulders. He wore only black, from the slightly open silk shirt that hugged his trunk to the pants to the shoes, yet his smile was blinding white, as much intimidating as his outfit.

“I can hardly be reprimanded for my manners when you won’t even look at me, father,” he retorted simply, and that was a first.

Reaching adolescence, Seijuro had hardly gone through any so-called ‘rebellious stage’, but that hadn’t surprised Masaomi that much. His son was far too smart for any kind of superficial quarrel; more like a venomous snake, he would hide low and wait for the right occasion to strike, aiming straight for the kill and nothing less. Apparently, the moment seemed to be that.

The older Akashi straightened up to meet his son’s gaze and laid with his back against the rest of the chair. “And which may be the occasion for such a sudden meeting?”

Seijuro planted both his palms firmly on his desk, taking advantage of the height he had on the sitting parent, and he lifted a corner of his mouth, daring him to challenge his choice.

“I successfully sealed the deal with an associate of mine in the States. I presume you may have heard of the Kagami family, am I wrong?”

Masaomi simply arched a brow and crossed his hands in front of him, on the desk. Yes, he had _heard_ of the family that took care of distributing most of the sport equipment to gyms all over the fifty states. Striking a deal to implant the Japanese latest software in their most luxurious machines would be one worth thousands of dollars, but that stubborn Saito had refused any kind of proposition from the Akashi group. Recently, the young heir, a certain Taiga, had taken over the company, but he hadn’t shown any intention of straying from his predecessor’s path, yet. But that wasn’t surprising considering the change had happened just, what?, a week earlier.

How could Seijuro already have a deal was actually beyond Masaomi’s knowledge. And his son apparently knew, if his smirk was anything to go by.

“You look surprised, father.”

“It’s not refined to demand for compliments, Seijuro.”

“I am not. I was just stating how much you seem to underestimate me.” Seijuro’s eyes flashed at those words, a clear warning, and Masaomi for a moment forgot their bantering, far too content in staring at their red shade.

When his son’s left eye had turned gold in those terrifying two years in between the end of his middle school career and the beginning of his high school, Masaomi had felt like dying again. His son, his precious son, had become no different from his mother. At first, it had been terrifying, but then he had realized his son’s second personality didn’t seem to be as dangerous to anyone as his mother’s had been for him; then suddenly one day Seijuro had come on with both red eyes, had said something about losing and left to go to his room. His father had been too relieved at the change to be bothered by his failure, not that he would ever tell him.

“But that aside-” Masaomi fell back into present quite rapidly as his son’s wolfish attitude came back full force, “-I’d like you to know I got the deal with Taiga through his best friend. You surely _don’t_ remember Kuroko Tetsuya, from my middle school years, do you?”

Indeed, he didn’t. The only teammate of Seijuro Masaomi had bothered to know was Midorima Shintarou, the son of his own friend, and just for long enough to make sure he wasn’t aware of anything regarding Shiori. After that, he had left to his own security to check on everybody whom his son came in contact to, and aside from a suspicious guy named Haizaki, that Seijuro got rid of for himself, nobody else had required his attention.

“Teikoo Middle School had been a good choice of school,” he commented simply, trying to figure where his son was trying to lead him. “I am glad you made useful connections, there.”

Seijuro arched a perfect brow at him. “I’m not sure, father. Not all my connections sucked my dick in the locker rooms.”

_That_ , Masaomi hadn’t seen coming. He could see from the flame dancing in his son’s eyes that Seijuro was challenging him, daring him to say anything against what earned them both one the most profitable deals of the past three years, not to mention one the Akashi family name had bet pride on with their stubborn attempts to bend the American family to their request. A well played move, if nothing else.

He tapped a finger on the armrest of his chair, waiting to see if any kind of crack opened in his son’s defence, but it seemed that the younger man had learnt the virtue of patience, preparing himself for that day.

“I take it you’re not just here to fill me in about your sexual excurses during your teen years,” he prompted then, but Seijuro shook his head with a condescending chuckle.

“Oh, I wouldn’t bother you with old stories, father,” he corrected in fact. “Tetsuya has been my lover for the past, oh, look at that, already nine years, and I have no intentions of giving him up anytime soon. Actually, anytime _at all_.” Seijuro straightened up, to his full height, and the smile left his face in favour of a stern gaze Masaomi could mirror himself into. “I am not here for your opinion on the matter, father. I am here to inform you that I have chosen the man I will be spending my life with and that I won’t let you get in the way.” A flicker of his hand, a wave to wash away hypothetical objections. “The deal with the Kagami is barely an authorization to managing the matter of the software and it’s entirely under my name. You can choose to disown me and throw me out, obviously, but I will take all that rights with me and _I_ will be the one you’ll have to make a new deal with to get your software on those machines. Want to see how much money I can make without your help, father? I am sure there are hundreds of other companies interested on this deal.”

Indeed, a venomous snake. Masaomi was - morally questionably – proud.

“Retreat your claws, Seijuro, you won’t need them,” he copied his movement of the hand, realizing only after the actual wave of the little symmetric, and instead pointed at one of the chairs in front of his desk. “I guess we have some talking to do.”

Seijuro seemed a bit taken aback, but to his credit he sat down elegantly, showing no opening at all and mirroring his relaxed pose. Masaomi pressed the interphone and asked Sakamoto to bring up sake – and if it was barely five in the afternoon, it was something to be bothered with in normal days, surely not in such occasions –. His son seemed still guarded though, clearly confused by his last request, but the man waited for the cups to come and be filled before speaking again.

“So, a young man?”

Seijuro arched a brow as if he had just been asked if his hair were naturally red. “ _Yes_ , father. A young man I intend to marry during my next trip to the States and build a family with, regardless of your eventual blessing.”

Masaomi spun the liquor in his cup, noticing that his son had yet to drink from his. He had to channel all his willpower in not looking at the drawer at his left.

“Building a family as in… _adopting_?”

“Oh, sorry, father,-” Seijuro sneered, rolling his eyes, “-it seems an adopted heir will have to suffice you. I know it’s not the pureblood you were hoping for, but I frankly do not care.”

Masaomi frowned. “Now you’re being disrespectful.” He ignored the glare he received back and instead gave up, his eyes falling to the bottom drawer of his desk.

Adoption meant that Seijuro would become a parent, a father. It meant that Seijuro would have a child to care for, more responsibilities on top of those he already had. It meant another child with a D.I.D. diagnosed parent.

Flashes of Shiori’s worst moments flooded his mind and made Masaomi close his eyes and shake his head almost forcefully. When he opened them again, Seijuro was tense, clearly ready for a fight. And his eyes were both red.

_For now._

“Invite your lover for dinner.”

“What?!” Seijuro’s eyes seemed ready to fall out their orbs, before he frowned and clenched his fists. “I won’t have Tetsuya undergo whatever kind of interrogation or degrading speech you have in mind, father. This is between you and me.”

Masaomi shook his head, somehow, deep inside, _pleased_. Seijuro wasn’t perfect, but he was strong. Stronger than his mother had ever been.

Slowly, carelessly, he pulled a tiny silver key from the pocket of his jacket and he looked at it for a moment before moving his eyes on his frowning child. He almost laughed at how that term couldn’t fit the young man in front of him anymore. With just a handful of scars on his mind, Seijuro stared back at him, conscious and present to himself, willed, powerful in his own way.

“I have no reason to try to drive this man away from you, Seijuro, even if I were to think you’d ever let me.” The younger Akashi blinked, once more taken aback, but Masaomi just turned his head to a side, to spy outside the window. The sight it gave him was on the courtyard Shiori gave her son his first basketball. “An Akashi spouse has responsibilities that I’m sure whoever you chose for yourself will be more than able to carry on. As long as _this_ is fulfilled, I have no other requirements to demand.” He looked back at his son, eye to eye, serious. “Will he be able to stand by your side whatever may happen and regardless of your _conditions_?”

Seijuro blinked maybe once too fast at the last world, certainly reading the words ‘mental issues’ carved within, but his expression hardened into a resolute frown. “Tetsuya has supported me through thick and thin. I do not doubt, in any way, his capability to hold his ground as an Akashi spouse, in whatever field you may consider. Father, I did not make my choice foolishly. I know what I’m asking of him and I know he can give even much more than that.”

“ _Then_ , you will invite him over for dinner, Seijuro. You don’t want me to meet your future husband on the day of the marriage, do you?” He tried not to show any emotion as he added: “There’s an old story I would like for you and your betrothed to listen to.”

Seijuro wanted to object, and badly from the way his fists were clenched, but Masaomi ignored that and just poured himself another cup of sake. His son just slammed his, still full, on the desk as he stood up abruptly.

“If this is a trick of any sort, father,-” he hissed, venom soaking through every word, “-I will _not_ forgive you. And you will find out my wrath is a force to be reckon with.”

Before any possible answer, Seijuro had stood up and left already, his hand slipping his phone out of his trousers pockets already, probably to call his lover. Would he try to vent out his anger or just report the message?, would that Tetsuya listen to him and be amused or get angry himself?

Masaomi didn’t really spend much time to think about that. Instead, he bent to a side and slipped the silver key still in his hand in the lock of the bottom drawer. The click was as loud as a gunshot to his ears and, when he opened it, the little rectangular paper that came to his eyes had gone yellowish with time. He picked it up as if it was the frailest of crystals and held it with barely two fingers, even as he opened it.

Shiori’s handwriting was perfect, still. He smiled a bit.

_Nothing is quite as it seems anymore, isn’t it?_ , he imagined to ask her, but instead he shook his head. He had let her go, so now, if there still was a chance, it was Seijuro’s right to choose if he wanted to bring her back to their lives or not.

Masaomi knew he had made a promise, but with the possibility of his own son becoming a parent, he thought he had the right to let Seijuro know what could have happened in the worst case scenario. Also his lover: he, too, deserved to know what he may be involving himself with. And fifteen years seemed such a long time, now.

He looked up at the door his son had disappeared out of and he imagined that night, what he would say, how he would explain all the lies that had built up Seijuro’s life up until then.

He smiled sadly as he thought about the face he would make, betrayal and horror and rage all together. But at least, that would be finally the truth.

Shiori’s address was still there, patiently waiting just like her.

**Author's Note:**

> I took inspiration from a real case of D.I.D., a young woman from high society that developed a secondary personality to face the pressure her family pushed onto her. That personality, though, got her pregnant with a random man she had no way to remember. Dissociative Identity Disorder may take many faces, but in some cases it can make someone dangerous, and that was Shiori's case.
> 
> I don't know, really, I just wanted to explore the possibility of her not being the perfect mom the whole fandom loves. Don't worry, I still love her and hate Masaomi, I just wanted a change of scenery for a bit.
> 
> See you,  
> Agap
> 
> Tumblr: agapantoblu.tumblr.com


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